Well, this month after waiting nearly 3.5 months and after being told it would be 
ready at the beginning of May, I finally moved into my own place. It has taken me several weeks to move everything and I’m still working on unpacking boxes but it’s finally somewhere I can call home. There is truly nothing like sleeping in your own bed! The Lord is good and I’m thankful for his blessings.
This past week I took a run down to Lome. It’s the equivalent of driving from Jacksonville, Florida to Miami, Florida but with crazy people, insane drivers, periodical goat crossings and a road riddled with pot holes. It’s a unique and long experience to say the least!
This is the first time I had been back since Easter weekend and it would be the first of three trips in three weeks and four trips in five weeks. It would be safe to say that I loath the trips but at the same times they are absolutely necessary from time to time.
This particular trip had so many objects. There is a group of four gentlemen coming in mid-July and I needed to buy some food supplies for their arrival. Things like roast, cheese and brown sugar can only be found 7 hours south of Kara in Lome. I also was on the hunt for steel. Yes, I needed steel to start the fabrication process of benches. With steel prices being astronomically high, it’s actually more economical when in Lome to buy the tubular steel needed to construct the bench frame then transport it back north and higher out the welding to a local African contractor. At current currency exchange rates each metal frame for a church bench which will eventually have a wood backing and a wooden set is costing $11.15. This is before you add the paint, the transportation, the welding rods, the welding costs and of course the wood and varnish. Needless to say building benches aren’t the cheapest or easiest task to organize but they last for decades and are much more comfortable then a cement floor or cement block.
On the way back from Lome about three hours south of Kara my African traveling companion and I had a flat tire. He started searching for the tire iron and we realized that the local mechanic who had been doing some suspension repairs on the truck had accidentally kept it. We were next to nowhere, with a flat tire, without a tire iron! Well, God is good all the time. It turns out that we were in a very small town, maybe of less then 200 people but there was a tire repair shack just 100 meters north from our position. The had a tire iron and after and hour and a half it was fixed and we were up and running. The total cost of the repairs was 3,500 france or less then 9 dollars. The heat was intense and possible the best thing going for us that hour and a half was the very cold Coke that we found at an African Restaurant that was dirty and crawling with flies. Despite the sanitary conditions and the atmosphere, that Coke might have been the best Coke I’ve ever drank in my life! I was able to hand out a couple “This is your Life” Chick Tracts and the men seemed thrilled for the pay and for the tracts. From there it was home and the rest of the trip was merely routine.
